I thought I had purchased another book recanting the mythology of ancient Europe, intending to add it to my collection. Instead I found a serious book, challenging the way I, a descendent of Western Civilization, view myself, man, and the world. I am most pleased that I purchased this book and recommend it to listeners, and, of course, the explorers and adventurers in the journey of being and becoming human.

We found this book in the library. It's terrific -- intelligently written but as easy to read as a novel. It has more information about Athens at the time of Pericles than any other children's book we consulted. It doesn't have any photos or drawings at all, but if I had to choose one children's book about Ancient Greece to recommend, this would be it. Perfect for 9 to 12 year olds.

I think this is the best travelling guide of Greece I've ever seen! The pictures are brilliant, they really bring out the atmesphere of Greece, i can almost smell the air of kos while watching the pictures.... the text is interesting and easy to read, keep up the good work!

This text is an excellent introduction to the Greek and Roman civilizations. It is well illustrated with photographs, maps, drawings, and paintings. The main eras, events, places and personalities in the history of Greece and Rome are mentioned. This book is typical of the high quality of a National Geographic Society publication.

This book should have at least one review, don't you think? I was a student of hers when she was writing it. It was the first of her children (she had two more) and she labored over it for more than a year in very trying circumstances. The problem was, she was trying to teach the Bronze Age and there were no syntheses in a field in which, unless you had the right connections, everything you did or said was wrong. She persisted. There are still no good rivals of this book, and the book is still an excellent overview. It contains no brilliant theses. There is much good realism. If you read between the lines, she foreshadows the later debunking of Schliemann, who planted artifacts in the shaft graves. She well knew that, if you contradicted the wrong people, you would, like Evans' master of archaeology, never work in the field again. But, she put excellence first and came up with an excellent book. The author passed on in February of 2001. I think we were all lucky to have had her for so long. She too is a classic now. One can only hope she knows answer to the mysteries she studied for so long.

Clearly not intended for the merely casual reader, this volume presents eleven deadly-serious essays that apply modern analytical methods to issues and problems facing the Greek Nation and State, with a view toward indicating what seems to be working and what needs adjusting. The fields covered are politics, foreign relations, economics, sociology, and change in all of these areas. Some essays require a high level of competence in the methodology of the given area; others are more immediately accessible even to the informed layman. One discusses the contributions to nation building made by the Orthodox Church since the early 19th Century and points out some changes that might be made in the Church's relations with government and society at this point in history. Another speaks to Greek attitudes toward making a living and contributing to the common economic good (problems here). There is also an extremely intelligent feminist article that examines the glass ceiling phenomenon in the Greek setting, particularly in the labor force and politics. The writer, Nota Kyriazis, points out that de jure equality...does not automatically produce a real improvement in women's status because attitudes and behaviors tend to remain tied to tradition and resistant to change. As indicated, all these essays are serious and scholarly. Everyone who still has some hope for our collective human future and the Greek stake in such a future should read at least some of them. The quality of analysis and writing is consistent throughout -- uniformly high.

I bought this book for my 8 year old daughter who loves geography and facts. She loved this book, along with the other books like it, Japan for example. It gives a lot of detail about the country.

I am taking along the Eyewitness Travel Guide for "Greece: Athens & The Mainland" on our trip to Greece today because it shows us everything we are not going to see (Hang on, this will make sense). These DK volumes pride themselves on being "The guides that show you what others only tell you," being filled with over 1,000 photographs, illustrations, and maps. There are cutaways and floor plans of all the major sites that we are seeing, just as the Parthenon and the monastery of Varlaam. But in a week in Greece there is only so much you can see and if we not have time to visit everything in Athens and are only visiting two of the monasteries of Meteora, then this DK Eyewitness Travel Guide will show us something of what we are missing. There are sections on Ancient Greece and then Area by Area sections on Athens and Mainland Greece, along with a section on Travellers' Needs and a Surival Guide. So all the basic are covered along with the profuse illustrations.

Of course there are also sections on where to eat, where to stay, and how to get around. I especially liked the pages devoted to various types of local cuisine, which shows you what you would find on the classic Greek menu as well as the different type of dishes you should try in Central Greece versus the Peloponese. You can use this guide to scope out what you will find when you visit places like Mycenae, Olympia, and Delphi, but you might want to use it more as a reminder of what you have seen than spoiling some of the ancient treasures in store for you at these sites. For example, "discovering" the golden mask of Agamemnon or the statue of Hermes by Praxiteles might work better as a complete surprise. Then again, you would hate to miss some of these things. Of course, we compromise: I know what there is to see and my wife gets to be surprised. It works for us.

P.S. Back from Greece and everybody wanted to borrow our guidebook. Several are going to pick it up when they get back home because it serves as a nice reminder of what we saw (and what we did not see).

This book has many virtues and I am happy to report that rigid scientific objectivity is not among them. But I don't meant to say that the authors get all emotional or romantic. They don't.
They use a thematic rather than chronological approach to guide the reader from the end of the War of Independence to the present by dividing their work into several sections: politics and statecraft, social and political institutions, economics, society, ideology, foreign policy, and national geography. They sum up certain events, persons, and phenomena in encapuslated form so as not to slow down the narrative progression in any given section. That is a very intelligent approach, I believe. Some of the encapsulations are too short and too uncritical, but they are adequate. At the end of their introduction the authors state that Greece is in many ways more in keeping with modernity than is customarily believed. And in this they are unfortunately right. The way Greece has managed to hold on to its few remaining archaisms is one of the things that most attract me. The status of women in Greek society has improved greatly but it is still an area that needs work, along with the attitude to discovery procedures among the intelligentsia and the tendency to rely too heavily on strongmen in political life. The authors also say "the modern Greeks themselves have not really accepted that they are a modern nation constructed like all others, or appreciated what they have achieved as a modern nation." Right on. In their great rush to modernity the Greeks sometimes give the impression of having jumped over some essential developmental stages, but even so things do seem to be working themselves out.
Anyway, the closer you get to the present moment in any given section of the book, the more you wish you had been more attentive to news broadcasts in the past few years. Ah yes, you say, why didn't that occur to me?
I have to mention that this book contains some typos and misprints, which I found surprising since it is published by New York University Press, from whom on expects nothing less than perfection, doesn't one?

This volume actually contains four normal-length novels - what a steal! Includes a terrific collection of "light" romance stories that resist the modern urge to perpetuate [stuff], and instead, this author writes uplifting, enchanting stories that are consistant with Christian, ... values. The author is a native of Greece, and is able to capture to amazing mystery and lure of the ancient city while narrating four thrilling stories. If you enjoy Christian Inspirational Romance, you will enjoy this book. You might also want to read Australia by Mary Hawkins, Getaways by Peggy Darty, and American Dream by Kristy Dykes.